Awake
by Saph-chan
Summary: Sometimes being a criminal that always manages to avoid the police can be extremely boring. Only one person is worthy to be on the opposite side of Jim Moriarty's chessboard.


This fic isn't a songfic. More specifically it's a fic based off a song. For those of you who've never heard "Awake" by Godsmack go look it up on YouTube right now. The song perfectly matches Moriarty and Sherlock's relationship, in my opinion.

This is my first effort in fandom. I may make a second part from Sherlock's point of view. I don't know yet. I'm marking this as complete for now.

* * *

The sound of a gunshot filled the air, muffled by the cold air and the vast space of the warehouse. The body of the woman, neatly clothed in a business-like suit, slumped face-first to the concrete floor. The only thing satisfactory about her fall was the fact that her skull audibly cracked upon the impact, causing more blood to ooze out and pool around her head from the bullet through her temple.

Moriarty sighed and placed his hands in the pockets of his trousers. A disappointed frown marred his features as he looked at the corpse just feet away of where he was standing. Without any hesitance in his stride he closed the distance, stopping just by the chest and turning.

"Did you enjoy that? That could have been considered mercy compared to what you really could have gone through."

He lifted his foot, carefully using the delicate sole of his shoe to turn the body so he could see the face more clearly and not get blood on it at the same time. Fear was the best way to control people, but it was also what led them down the path to their hastened downfall. Sadly the only thing Moriarty could do was watch as the dull, _ordinary_ people with no brains what-so-ever succumbed to the pressure and crumbled to their knees.

The more people who fell before him, the more he felt a piece of himself dying as well. Not in an empathetic way of speaking. Oh no. The consulting criminal could not feel the pain and the sorrow of his victims. He was speaking in a sense of boredom. That was what life was: dull, ordinary, and worst of all, boring.

This one at least had lasted longer than he had originally thought. She, at least, had the smarts to trap herself in a web and attempt to find out the real mystery. But the end result was still the same.

"No no no…" Moriarty's hands slipped out of his pockets and he brought them up to cup his face. "Why? Oh, why?" A dramatic sob escaped his throat. "Why are all these people cursed and forced to live the same repetitive lives as everyone else? So dull, so dull!"

It was sickening. That was why he chose to be who he was. Money wasn't an issue because he knew exactly what string to pull to get more if his funds ever ran out. He could pay the right people to be the pawns on his game board. But even then it was boring. There were many scenarios he could do: threaten the police with a bomb in the Parliament building was an example. Then he could threaten the police to find someone with enough smarts to try and solve his riddle and he could watch them squirm and shake in fear and when they couldn't solve the puzzle on time… BOOM!

But then everything would go back to the way it was.

His hands slipped away from his face as he stared around the warehouse.

"Just what do I have to do?!" He shouted into the nothingness. Surely one of his henchmen might hear him but he hardly considered them the answer to any of his problems, despite the fact that they were the ones who held the guns. "Just what do I have to do to make it all better?! A game where my side wins so easily is hardly a game at all!"

He stepped away from the corpse and turned his back. He couldn't look at her anymore since she'd gone down way too easily.

And with that, he was forced to return to his thoughts.

An endless game… a war with so many battles fought that it would be hard to tell who would emerge victorious. The beauty of the word endless was, well, whatever was applied to it never ended. Oh yes, a game of pure intellect and the trill of hoping you're one step ahead of your opponent, your heart pounding so fast in anxiousness as you move your pawn with the debate inside your mind that it may just as well be your last, and the thrill of putting your life on the line in hopes of ending your opponent's first.

Brilliant, just brilliant. In the irony of the word "war", it was the very thing to make him alive again.

For every yang there must always be a yin, a light to balance the dark, good to balance evil. For every consulting criminal there must also be a consulting detective.

The thought brought a smile to Moriarty's lips as he thought of the possibilities his mind could come up with for a game that he and Sherlock Holmes could play.

Sherlock was brilliant, there was no denying that. Every case that he was consulted with he'd managed to solve, no matter how cold it was. However, he hadn't hit a case that was so cold to be almost absolute zero. Moriarty excited at the idea that it could possibly be him to set forth that trend.

Sherlock would be his opponent; there was no doubt about that. Two bored men in a bleak world had very little to entertain themselves with. People around them simply relished in the convenience of the simple technologies the modern era could provide. Instead of owning a library of books where you could look up something you didn't know and then read on to find out more about the topic, you could simply whip out your mobile and Google it for a summary in two sentences without knowing the whole story. People's minds nowadays were blunted down to the point where they almost didn't exist.

But first he would have to start off simple. But simple didn't have to mean boring. Oh no, most definitely not.

He motioned with his hand to one of his henchmen. No one would find the body for a few days, but Moriarty didn't like the smell of rotting corpses. That was the inspiration to get out of here as soon as he possibly could.

He walked up to his goon, who was a few inches taller than he was. He stood to him almost chest to chest and lifted himself onto the tips of his toes so he could reach the man's ear. He whispered simple instructions and the man nodded before slipping on a pair of latex gloves and going to work.

No more than five minutes later, Moriarty and his men were gone. Moriarty only lingered for a few moments to examine the work of art he'd so kindly left behind.

The woman's blood continued to pool around her, but there wasn't enough now to obscure the message written directly above her head in her own blood. It only spelled out one word:

SHERLOCK

The game would be starting very soon. Jim Moriarty wasn't just simply alive anymore; he was awake.


End file.
